Make your plan, work your plan.

Make your plan, work your plan.

One of my very successful uncles (yes, I have a couple of rich uncles) lives by this motto. He repeats it frequently when doing mundane tasks like washing the car, or setting up big business deals. And he made a lot of money, by the way.

What does that have to do with social media? Isn’t it supposed to be, well, social? And that doesn’t require a lot of planning, does it? Kind of like an online cocktail party.

With an ever-growing number of channels for your social presence online, it certainly does take planning! No one has the time to take care of business and still keep up a reasonable flow of content to an unlimited number of sites. Using one of the aggregators helps, but you still have to take into account the “personality” of each site in which you participate.

There’s a huge need to jump into every new site. No one wants to be left out of the latest and greatest conversation. So you read everything out in all the blogs and advice sites about how to make the most of the flavor of the day, and jump in head first.

That’s where the plan comes in. And part of the plan is to decide which sites you want to concentrate on; and which sites you need to give up. Yes, I said give up. See above comments about a reasonable flow of content to an unlimited number of sites. How to decide what sites to give up?

As a part of any good marketing plan, you will identify goals, strategies, messages, tactics, and audiences. Here’s your decision point. Every social media site has a distinct audience and focus. Identify what audience you want, what audience is visiting each social site, and you have you answer. Easy-peasey.

Related

About @Midwest

@Midwest grew out of a series of meetings between various professionals in the Bloomington-Normal area to discuss the best practices of social media marketing.
Discover more about @Midwest and find out what the media has to say about us.